BAY OF PIGS, Cuba (AP) -- Alfredo Duran stared out at the deep blue water
off
the voluptuous Cuban coastline Saturday and recalled the disastrous defeat
his exile
invasion force suffered 40 years ago on this Cold War battlefield.

``That's where the supply boats were, the ones that the Cubans sank,''
Duran said,
pointing at the sea. He stood on the shore where a team of Cuban exiles
armed and
trained by the CIA landed in an invasion known as the Bay of Pigs.

``It is very emotional to be on this beach, where a lot of my friends died,
where a lot
of people died on the other side,'' Duran said.

At the close of a three-day conference studying the April 1961 invasion,
Duran
joined other exiles, ex-CIA operatives, former assistants to President
Kennedy and
retired Cuban military commanders in a visit to the place where it all
happened.

At the time, the invasion was the right thing to do, said Duran. ``But
the times have
changed, and one has to change with the times,'' he said.

That view was shared by Cuban scholar Wayne Smith, an U.S. diplomat who
left
Havana when relations between the countries were severed months before
the
invasion.

``It's time to begin a process of healing and reconciliation. Our government
doesn't
seem to realize that, but the people here do,'' Smith said of the 150 conference
participants -- protagonists on both sides of a battle that shaped the
U.S.-Cuba
relationship for decades.

Closing their meeting, the former Cold War adversaries said in a brief
statement that
they hoped that their encounter would ``serve as a model to continue the
expansion
of a dialogue about this and other important themes in the prolonged conflict
between the United States and Cuba.''

Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, who led the defending forces
on the
beach, said the meeting turned out better than expected.

``We have had a very useful dialogue here, with mutual respect,'' he said.

The trip to the neighboring beaches of Playa Larga and Playa Giron on the
island's
south-central coast came on the last day of the conference.

Cuban President Fidel Castro attended the sessions in Havana on Thursday
and
Friday behind closed doors, poring over newly declassified documents on
the event.
But he did not attend the Saturday visit to the battle site, a two-hour
drive southeast
of the capital.

Castro joined them in front of a map on Friday as they exchanged recollections
about the three-day invasion, Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive
told
reporters late Friday. The archive, based at George Washington University,
helped
organize the event with the University of Havana.

Dedicated to declassifying secret U.S. documents, the archive provided
participants
with a wealth of new information about the invasion, which has shaped has
U.S.-Cuba relations for the four decades since.

Trained by the CIA in Guatemala, the 2506 Brigade was comprised of about
1,500
exiles determined to overthrow Castro's government, which had seized power
28
months before.

The three-day invasion failed. Without U.S. air support and running short
of
ammunition, more than 1,000 invaders were captured. Another 100 invaders
and
151 defenders died.

The Cuban government also released a number of formerly secret papers,
including
one in which Fernandez, who led the defending forces on the beach as a
young
military captain, listed what he considered to be his numerous errors.

At one point, an amused Castro read aloud from a U.S. document assessing
his
personality after his U.S. visit as Cuba's new prime minister in early
1959,
participants said. The group also studied the first known CIA document
calling for
Castro's assassination.

There were nearly 60 people in the American delegation to the conference,
including
five members of the invasion force and Kennedy aides Arthur Schlesinger
and
Richard Goodwin, who both thought the invasion was ill-advised.